Saturday, July 23, 2016

We’re off on our first trip to the United Kingdom! Our
itinerary includes London, Manchester and Bath, England, and several days in
northern Wales. I keep hearing that summer in those parts is not very different
from summer in these parts – mostly moderate in temperature but possibly wet
and cool – so it’ll be just like home (well, except for the Edwardian castles,
ancient Roman baths and warm beer).

The main event on my itinerary is, of course, the 7th International Urban Sketchers Symposium in Manchester, where I’ll be serving as one of four correspondents to report on the event. I’m mostly
thrilled and excited, but I’m also a bit anxious and nervous. With two
symposiums under my belt, I’m familiar with the intensity of being immersed in
urban sketching for three-and-a-half solid days. I already know the fun of
becoming reacquainted with worldwide sketchers and meeting ones I’ve known only
online. The challenge of reporting on all of that, however, will be a very new
experience.

I won’t be blogging here while I’m gone, but on July 27 –
30, please check out the daily posts of the correspondents team on the Urban SketchersSymposium blog. We’ll be sharing links to our posts on the Manchester Symposium Facebook page. You
can keep up with the rest of my UK adventures on Instagramand Flickr.
And you can also search for the hashtag ‪#‎uskmanchester2016 on
social media to find sketches and photos by all participants.

Friday, July 22, 2016

Two distinctive and strikingly different churches dominate the
South Lake Union area’s historic Cascade neighborhood. The most eye-catching is
St. Spiridon Russian Orthodox Cathedral, with its deep blue onion domes. SinceI’d sketched St. Spiridon about a year ago
(and since I should have been home packing my bag instead of sketching with Urban Sketchers Seattle this morning
and was short on time), I decided to focus on the second church: Immanuel Lutheran.

Completed in 1912, the church has been on the historic
register since 1982. Although it doesn’t look like anything I’ve sketched in
Europe, the round and arched windows evoke the same architectural details I saw
on Gothic buildings in Spain and Germany. It’s exactly the kind of building
that makes me freeze with the deer-in-the-headlights look if I try to go at it
with a fine point pen. But with only an hour to sketch, I immediately pulled
out my brush pen to hit it as hard and fast as possible. It’s probably a good
strategy even when I can be more leisurely.

The rain earlier in the morning may have kept some sketchers
away, but the seven of us who showed up shared sketches afterwards at Espresso Vivace. Those blue onion domes
captured a lot of attention!

In back, from left: Marvin, Ching, Kathleen and Sue. In front: Tina, Anne and Natalie
(Thanks to John Pound for taking the photo.)

Thursday, July 21, 2016

The Queen Anne neighborhood’s weekly farmers market always brings in terrific food trucks
and plenty of community seating. Last week when the weather finally started
feeling like summer, we picked up our produce there in the late afternoon and
then stayed for dinner.

After strolling past all the food trucks to sniff out my
options, I chose Mystery Bay Seafood Catering,
where I got the best grilled salmon
sandwich I have ever had! As a Pacific Northwest native, I’ve eaten a lot of
delicious salmon in my life, so my standards are fairly high, and this sandwich
was amazing. The poor guy at the booth was all alone, but he moved briskly and
efficiently among the grills and chowder pots to keep his line of hungry patrons
happy.

After dinner we stopped for ice cream at another food truck.
I found seats directly across from a classical guitarist who gave us delightful
music to scarf our ice cream down by.

7/14/16 ink, colored pencils

Ahhhh. I know I say this every year, but it’s the truth: Summer
in Seattle doesn’t get any better than this! And it’s short and precious. I hope you’re enjoying your
summer, too.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

For the past couple of years, my favorite water-soluble
colored pencils have been Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils. Probably the Mercedes of colored pencils, they
cost a pretty penny, but I take advantage of open stock suppliersto buy only the colors I use.
Although the Museum color range isn’t as wide as Faber-Castell’s Albrecht Durer or Caran d’Ache’s mid-range pencil, Supracolor, that range includes an irresistible
variety of earthy tones handy for urban sketching and other hues that closely
align with watercolor paint pigments. The main reason I like the Museum line,
however, is that they are the softest colored pencils I’ve ever used. They can
be applied effortlessly and dissolve completely when activated with a little water
and without scrubbing.

An assortment of 18 Fancolor pencils.

Just recently, a new (to me; I don’t think the product is
new) line from Caran d’Ache came to my attention: Fancolor water-soluble colored pencils. Unlike the Museum and Supracolor
lines, which are in the “professional and artist” collection, the Fancolor
pencils are in the “hobby” section, which is probably the same as other
manufacturers’ “student” lines.

When I’ve tried “student” grade colored pencils, especially inexpensive
ones, I’ve found most to be dry, hard and scratchy in application, and water only
partially dissolves the pigment. (One example is Faber-Castell’s Art Grip Aquarelle line.) I figured that the
Fancolors might be like this, but colored pencil junkie that I am, I couldn’t
resist getting a box of 18, just to see what they’re like. I kept my
expectations low.

To my surprise, when applied, the Fancolors feel almost as
soft and creamy as Museum pencils (if you blindfolded me, I’d probably have a
hard time knowing the difference). When activated with water, the hues aren’t
quite as rich as Museum pencils (which undoubtedly have more pigment), but they
still dissolve as fully and quickly. And the colors blend just as easily.

6/21/16 Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils, S&B Alpha

In the sketches shown here, the one of the banana and
cherries (top) was done on Stillman & Birn Alpha paper, which has a good tooth to it. I’ve found it to be an ideal
surface for water-soluble colored pencils, because the tooth grabs the pigment
easily when applied in gradual layers, and it holds up well if water is
applied. For comparison, I’m showing a still life of three heirloom tomatoes that
you saw last month (at right), which was done with Museum pencils, also on S&B Alpha.

The sketch of the single heirloom (bottom of page) was done in a yellow Field Notes notebook. (Granted,
that paper is probably not intended for water-soluble colored pencils, but it
held up well to both the bright colors and water.) The Field Notes paper is a
lot smoother than S&B Alpha, and I think colored pencils really need a
little more tooth for better coverage. Still, the Fancolors didn’t do bad at
all, and the white pencil included in the box of 18 helped bring out the
highlights that didn’t quite pop on yellow paper as they did on white Alpha.

Although its water-activated pigment isn't quite as rich,
Fancolor dissolves as fully and easily as Museum
pencils.

Despite how much I love Museum pencils, a pet peeve of mine
is that their diameter is just slightly larger than conventional pencils, and I’ve
had a heck of a time finding a portable sharpener that can accommodate them. (I
took my search all the way to Parisand Tokyo with mediocre results.Right now, the smaller hole of this KUM sharpener seems to be working
best.) So I was delighted to find that Fancolor pencils are the same diameter as
conventional pencils. I can stick them into my electric pencil sharpener, and
they come out with deadly sharp points, just as I like them. And yet they don’t
crumble!

On the downside: If you care about archival materials, I’m assuming
that the Fancolors are not. That’s typically a distinguishing trait between “professional/artist”
and “hobby/student,” and Caran d’Ache tells me that Museum pencils’ lightfast colors
will last longer than I will. (However, I couldn’t find anything about whether Fancolors are archival in Caran d’Ache’s
product information.) In addition, the Fancolor range is relatively
narrow (the largest assortment comes with 40), and the hues tend toward
crayon-bright.

7/19/16 Fancolor pencils; Field Notes notebook

But how’s this for a colored pencil strategy: Get a budget-priced
box of 18 or 40 Fancolors for the basics, then fill in with individual colors
of high-priced Museums or mid-range Albrecht Durers or Supracolors for the more
subtle or rich, earthy hues. At less than half the price of Museums (and a
third less than Supracolors), the Fancolors offer a lot of bang for the buck.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Every time we travel internationally, the time and attention
I have to give to preparing depends on the country we’re visiting, the time of
year, how long we’ll be there, and many other factors. For example, Brazilrequired a visa with a tedious
and lengthy application process, but packing clothes was easy because I knew
the weather would be mostly warm. I’ve been to Japanfour times now, so familiarity makes packing for that country
relatively fast. But boning up on my rusty Japanese reading skills with a deck
of flash cards always takes longer than I think it should! It took us more time
than expected to plan our itinerary for France,
despite being a small country geographically, simply because there were so many
places we wanted to see.

Instead of my purple daily-carry Rickshaw bag, this waterproof version iscoming with me to the UK.

Although prepping for our upcoming trip to the UK seems like
it should be a snap – after all, for the first time, we don’t have to worry
about language issues – logistically, it’s not the easiest country to visit, at
least without a car. But one part of my prep has been the easiest ever, and
that’s my sketch kit!

Three years ago when I was getting ready for my first Urban
Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona, I
had to write two blog posts just on my kit prep – one for watercolors, and one for everything else. As a newbie to both symposiums and sketching in
general (I’d been at it for less than two years at that point), I didn’t know
what to expect, and I didn’t have enough experience to have a solid kit in
place. I spent many hours wringing my hands over what to bring, how much,
putting things into my bag, taking them out, and putting them back in again.

Again, not much is new about my kit for this upcoming trip.
Because rain is a distinct possibility, especially in London and Manchester,
I’m switching to my waterproof Rickshaw Bagworks Zero messenger bag(which I decided to purchase after my fabric
Rickshaw got drenched in Kyoto). I really love the fact that its design is
identical to my usual purple Rickshaw Zero; I won’t have to learn a new pocket arrangement.

My Kutsuwa Dr. Ion accessory organizer that keeps all my tools upright in mybag. (I have at least one blog reader who loves this, so I put this photo in justfor her! :-) I bought this in Tokyo, but I hope that JetPens will someday carry it.)

I’ve looked at photos of the areas I’ll be visiting and
picked out a couple of colored pencils that might come in handy (like the pale
turquoise blue of oxidized copper trim on old buildings), and I may ultimately change
out a few others. Overall, though, the bag’s contents are all the same tools
and materials I use every day (numbers refer to photo at top):

7. A hand-stitched signature of 140-pound Canson XL paper(I’ve stitched up seven signatures for
the trip, which is the number I typically fill on a trip of this length)

8. Pencil sharpener

9. Water spritzer

Included in the photo is (10) the Rhodia Rhodiarama pocket
notebook that I’ll use as my travel writing/collage/photo journal. Also shown is (11) a red Field Notes Sweet Tooth notebook.
That’s one part of my everyday bag that the jury’s still out on; it might get
jettisoned at the last minute. Since I’m bringing the little Rhodia as my
pocket notebook, I don’t really need the Sweet Tooth, but I’ve had so much fun
with it lately that I almost can’t bear to leave it behind. (We’ll see how
stuffed the bag feels on the night before I leave.)

Notable for its absence is the single biggest change from all
my previous trips: My “Stefano” won’t be coming along. (And you know how sad I am about that, so I won’t dwell on it.)

The second new addition doesn’t have anything to do with
sketching, but it’s more about my general travel journal. Before I started
sketching, I used to bring along a small Polaroid PoGo printer. At the end of the day
when we were relaxing in our hotel room, I’d print a few of my favorite photos
on the self-adhesive Zink paper and stick them right into the pages of my
journal where I wrote about experiences, observations and other travel
thoughts. When I first began sketching, I left the PoGo behind because I was a
little worried that I’d get lazy and go back to sticking in photos instead of
sketching. By the time I realized that risk was nil (although I may have my
share of issues, it’s probably apparent that getting lazy about sketching is
not one of them!), the PoGo had died.

The last couple of trips, however, I’ve missed my PoGo. When
I thought about the types of photos I’d glue into my journal, I realized they
wouldn’t replace sketches; they were more like selfies or strange signage I
didn’t want to forget. There’s a place for an instant printer even in a
sketcher’s journal.

On Amazon Prime day, a friend let me know that the Polaroid Zip printer was almost half
price; I jumped on it! It’s even smaller and lighter than my old PoGo.

So that’s it; nothing very exciting to report. But don’t you
like that photo of my bag dump?

Sunday, July 17, 2016

I look forward to Seattle’s Obon festival each
July. A Buddhist event to honor ancestors and loved ones who have died, Obon (also
called Bon Odori) is a time of celebration that includes dancing in the street,
literally.

Here’s the back story: Long ago, a man was grieving his mother’s
death (forgive me if this story lacks detail; Sunday school was a long time ago).
He was informed that his dead mother had reached Nirvana, and his grief turned
to joy. So happy was he that he began dancing in the street (well, I’m sure it
was a dirt road back then).

7/16/16 Kuretake brush pen, Zig marker

I don’t know if I got all of that story right, but I do know
that the Obon tradition has managed to survive in many Japanese American
communities. This fact astounds my Japanese friends and relatives, who see the
tradition rapidly dying away in their own country. They find it hard to imagine
that such an archaic, quaint festival is being kept alive in places like
Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

When I was a kid, Obon was all about socializing with
friends as we dressed up in traditional garb, participated in the choreographed
folk dances and ate shaved ice. Back then, shorts and T-shirts were strictly
forbidden; after all, it is a religious event at its core. In recent decades,
though, rules have loosenedto be more inclusive, and people of all races and religions join the fun. Baseball caps and jeans
dance right alongside brightly colored kimono. A local taiko drumming group always
performs, a highlight of the evening. You can still eat shaved ice and noodles,
but you can also sit in the beer garden and listen to reggae or jazz.

7/16/16 Kuretake brush pen, Zig marker

As an adult, I still enjoy Obon as an occasion to see old
friends and sometimes even join in the dancing. This year I enjoyed it even
more because I brought my sketchbook to try to capture the color and energy.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Often it seems that my favorite sketches are those that I’ve
done when I’m out sketching on my own instead of with Urban Sketchers. Maybe
it’s that I’ve chosen the locations myself, so I already have more interest in
the subject matter. Or maybe it’s just that at group outings I spend more time
socializing and less time focusing on a composition.

As I picked out the sketches to put on my newly bound
sketchbook’s covers, however, I realized that two of my favorites during this
period were both from USk outings. One was done on a drizzly May morning at King Street Station. The other was made at
Fishermen’s Terminalwhen USk
Seattle celebrated its seventh anniversary.

In other sketchbook news, I know just last week I said I was going to fill the Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover book that I started that day. I
lied. As soon as I put the sketches from that day on my scanner, I remembered
that the Alpha paper is less opaque than I like, and I’ve been spoiled by
the 140-pound Canson XL I’ve been
using the past couple years. I switched immediately to my softcover Beta – and remembered how much I enjoyed that paper back
when I was using it more regularly. This one I will definitely fill.

Friday, July 15, 2016

It was only 55 degrees when I got up this morning. When Urban Sketchers Seattle met at Lincoln Park, several of us were toting
Polartecs or raincoats, just in case the weather changed the wrong way. (We
joked that Seattle beachwear always includes Polartec.) But sitting in the
blazing sun to make these sketches, all of my layers came off right away, and I
was glad I wore a tank top. It’s finally summer!

I was almost finished sketching the pink and lavender
vehicle parked next to some driftwood when its driver came by and drove off, so
I had to fake some of the shading. The Vashon ferry in the background, which I
was afraid would also pull out before I was done, took a lot longer to unload
and load its long lines of cars.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

The last time I sketched the Amazon spheres, I stood on the Seventh Avenue side of Lenora
Street. The balls’ amoeba-like skeletal structure was still entirely exposed. This
morning, two-and-a-half months later, I chose the Sixth Avenue side where I
could stand a bit closer. Though still visible, the skeleton is now almost
completely covered with a glass skin, and a few workers were way up at the top
installing the last of it.

Above them was one of the ubiquitous cranes towering
over the north downtown/South Lake Union area.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

“At The Northwest School, students experience the
exhilarating chemistry between academic disciplines and the arts. They learn to
see the interdependence of all aspects of life in the real world. A bigger
picture comes into focus. The school day becomes less about isolated
subjects—and more about dynamic, interwoven concepts and ideas.”

Before today, the statement above was all I really knew
about the Northwest School, because
that’s the philosophy I read on its website. But this morning I got a brief look
at what exactly that philosophy means – and wished that I had been exposed to
such a philosophy when I was in grades 6 through 12!

David and Roham

The school and the Seattle Architecture Foundation invited Urban Sketchers Seattle to visit Lily Hotchkiss’s design/architecture-based art
class to introduce the kids to urban sketching. In this summer session, the
students are learning to design different elements through sketches and models.
“I thought it would be great to start out by learning how to see buildings and
sketch them,” Lily said. “I love Urban Sketchers and think this will be an
exciting way to begin!

”

David Chamness
and I talked briefly to the five students, ages 10 through 15 and from several countries, in the classroom
about our experiences sketching from life and showed them our sketchbooks and
sketch kits. Then we all spent the rest of class time sketching in the area of
Boren and Pine in the heart of downtown.

As I expected, the kids didn’t need us at all J –
they all jumped into urban sketching with gusto. Engaged and enthusiastic, some
were impressively aware of art, design and architecture in our urban world. Those
bright young people will someday be our architects and urban planners – and hopefully
urban sketchers, too. Like I said, I sure wish I’d had the Northwest School to
attend when I was their age!

Instructor Lily Hotchkiss and two of her students

In true Urban Sketchers fashion, we all threw down our sketchbooks to share at the end of class!

Sunday, July 10, 2016

For the second year, Urban Sketchers Seattle took part in the Georgetown Garden Walk, an annual event that culminates with music and art in Oxbow Park. While I enjoy gardens as
much as the next sketcher, I knew from last year that they would be crowded and
difficult to sketch in, so today I went directly to the park instead. Like last year, I couldn’t resist another
sketch of at least the hat part of the legendary and historic Hat ‘n’ Boots.
Even better, a jazz band was performing under the hat (and unlikemy lunchtime experience yesterday, this
band was fantastic)!

In addition to us sketchers, lots of plein air painters also
found Hat ‘n’ Boots to be an inspiring subject. I loved looking around the park
and seeing sketchbooks and easels everywhere.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

When I go to farmers markets and other free venues to sketch
buskers and other musicians, I don’t expect or need the music to be good; my
entertainment comes from sketching them. That said, the jazz band that
performed this noon at the Shoreline Farmers Market was probably the worst we have ever heard. As we ate our
lunches from the food trucks, we kept asking each other, “Are they still tuning
up? Or have they started?” They sounded like they had never played together
before (and, we can only hope, will never again)!

Still, who am I to criticize? My entertainment comes from the
sketching, and that part was still fun.

And how's this for more serendipity? I don't usually carry a blue Field Notes notebook in my bag, but this morning I grabbed it on sheer whim as I was walking out the door. In the back of the restaurant near the gazebo was a stack of Adirondack chairs -- in the very same shade of blue!

7/8/16 brush pen, colored pencils

In other news, the vintage truck sketch filled the last page of the last signature I had stitched, so I decided to break in the new softcover Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook I reviewed a while back. It's definitely heavier and thicker than a single signature of paper, but the same number of pages takes up less than half the horizontal space on a bookshelf as a handbound volume. The Alpha paper may end up feeling too flimsy after using 140-pound paper all this time, but since I'm not using watercolor as much as I used to, the 100-pound Alpha may do just fine. I'm determined to fill the book and see how it goes. (Not while traveling, however -- I still plan to hand-bind sketches from my upcoming trip to the UK.)

(This is test 3 of mobile blogging. I uploaded images using the Blogger desktop dashboard, which is horrible on my tiny phone screen, but that seems to be the only way I can retain the full image size. Then I switched to the Blogaway app on my phone and typed the text. I'm going to add hyperlinks later from the desktop, since there doesn't seem to be a way to do that from this kludgy app. Glad I don't do this for a living.)

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Here's my second try at blogging remotely. I've simplified the process a bit by giving up on the CamScanner app, which seemed like such a good idea. Unfortunately, images couldn't be resized, and the default size was very small. For this sketch of picnickers at Meridian Park, I simply took a photo of the sketch.

I got several good suggestions from readers about dictating into the phone instead of writing, but my brain is wired so directly to my keyboard that I realized I couldn't think and dictate at the same time. ;-) But this little inexpensive and portable Anker keyboard speeds up phone blogging immensely!

Edited: Now that I'm in the Blogger editor from my desktop, I see that the image still can't be resized -- so the problem is not with CamScanner; it's with Blogaway (the third-party Blogger app I am using instead of the buggy Blogger app). Arggh. Back to the drawing board.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

After strawberries, my favorite early-summer fruit is
cherries. Rainiers have the most intense flavor and are more fun to color –
that lovely blush of red-orange on yellow. Bings, however, are an indescribable,
near-black shade of red that required four colored pencils to try to capture,
and I still didn’t get it dark enough. So shiny and sensuous, cherries were the
only sketchable bright spot on this gloomy, wet afternoon.

Monday, July 4, 2016

The man next door is eccentric, nosy, crabby and prone to
annoying behavior. I won’t go on and on (because I certainly could), but to
give you just one example: Whenever our other neighbor’s Labrador starts
barking, he goes out to the yard, stands by the fence and yells, “Shut up! Shut
up! Shut up!” which only makes the dog bark more. His yelling is far more
annoying than the dog’s barking.

The man next door is also the most patriotic person on our
street, if patriotism is demonstrated by display of the U.S. flag. Every
Memorial Day, Flag Day, Veteran’s Day and certainly Independence Day, he puts
his flag up in front of his house, without fail. He has done so for every
flag-appropriate holiday in the 28 years that we’ve been neighbors.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Yesterday we had visitors in town, so we got to play
tourists. One of our favorite places to take people who haven’t seen Seattle
before is the Ballard Locks. Full of
boats, aged-but-still-useful technology and a fish ladder for salmon, the Locks
are a quintessential Seattle experience, especially in the summer. An old-time
jazz band with vocalist were giving a 4th of July concert in the
park, so we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the music. Usually if we’re
entertaining guests, I try to restrain myself from taking time to sketch, so I
jumped at this opportunity for a quick one.

Later in the afternoon we made our rounds to another
favorite stop for visitors: Gas Works Park. Although I was just there a couple of weeks ago, I never tire of it –
the sights of Lake Union and the downtown skyline; the rolling green knolls of
Kite Hill; those crazy Gas Works that present a never-ending challenge to
sketch. As we sat on a shady bench for a break after walking through the park,
I grabbed the opportunity for another quick sketch, this time of a small part
of the Gas Works and the TV towers of Queen Anne Hill. (I sat on the very same bench to sketch a more northerly part of the same view last month.)

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Usually by
this time of year my market sketches would be of buskers, my favorite summer
sketching subject. I’m not sure if I’m going at the wrong times or to the wrong
markets, but I haven’t seen any besides PK Dwyer. It’s been a great season for strawberries and early peaches; I hope
it’s not a bad season for buskers.